


more than just a machine

by Fluoradine



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, F/F, Femslash February, Not Canon Compliant, OCs - Freeform, Robot and Creator, Robot/Human Relationships, Vishkar Corporation, based on deluxepeach's au/yimmygee's art, check them both out on tumblr if u have the chance!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13599282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluoradine/pseuds/Fluoradine
Summary: The Raptorion program is creating androids to protect Vishkar's employees from danger across the globe. Satya Vaswani is assigned the task of testing newly-activated units that she had hands in creating. Raptora 23A nearly passes until she starts talking, and Satya starts listening.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea how this is gonna go. this was meant to be one of a bunch of femslash feb prompts but i might continue it. enjoy for now, and check out deluxepeach's au on tumblr!

“Computer, turn on Raptora 23A.”

The android’s eyes flickered with blue neon. More light flashed across metal as it came to consciousness. Satya’s screen filled up with code as it examined the room, already pages of data being recorded by audio and visual receptors. 

The Raptorion system was Vishkar’s latest technological project. Working across the globe to save humanity from disorder was a surprisingly difficult task. As more and more base cities were set up to improve, citizens had started to build resistance, and attack the architects and engineers brought onto the grounds. It seemed the world did not want to be saved from its own perils, or at least, would not submit to utopia so easily.

Bodyguards were the original solution, but as they proved to be uncooperative, technology had once again taken their place. Wherever humans didn’t fit the environment, artificial intelligence had always replaced them. It was necessary for Vishkar to follow the path of innovation and create an android, one smart enough to process information and strong enough to protect a human from injury while trying to heal the world. 

So began the Raptorion project, and so became Raptora 23A, or as it was referred to by the lab, ‘Pharah’. During the building stage, her model somehow began to look uncannily like Fareeha Amari, the since-passed captain of Helix security in Egypt. Satya had never known her. But looking at her sculpted face just in front of her, she might as well have been her mother. 

This was the first time Satya had seen the android. It was more magnificent than she could’ve ever drawn out on blueprints. A frame made entirely from hard light, threaded with carbon fibre wires and a holotech memory system. It was possibly the most impressive thing Vishkar had ever made. And Satya was here to welcome it to reality.

‘Pharah’ took a minute to take her first steps. She raised her arm after a minute and six seconds, and turned her head after a minute and eleven. Satya let the data record itself, and made note of the times of her movements. She would read the full code later once Dipti had translated it back from numbers. 

Pharah didn’t seem to notice Satya until two full minutes had passed. She turned her head slowly, like an owl rotating around a full circle, and looked down at Satya. She was not much bigger than her, only by around half a foot - yet Satya still felt like she was being shadowed. 

“Hello.” she began with. Conversing with things that were not human was far from her speciality. To treat something that she had created as an equal gave her an alien sensation of sympathy. Vishkar had Omnic servants and mechanics, yes, but she could not remember ever speaking with one. 

A ping came from the computer, and Satya looked back down. The message was only a single word, written in large font that stood out amongst the millions of numbers of code. 

_Hello._

So that was how it would communicate. Satya didn’t need to reread the message to understand, yet she found herself staring at it for an abnormally long time. This was not the proper way to talk with someone. Pharah should be speaking aloud, not giving her something to read and then respond to verbally This method would take a while for Satya to adjust to. She pushed on. 

“I am going to test your processing of external data,” she continued, adjusting her coat. “I will recite a phrase to you, and you will repeat it back to me through the computer. The phrases will increase in difficulty as I continue. You will begin now. Sun.”

Ping. _Sun,_ the screen read. Satya’s hands went to type a response, but she held them back. Routine was such a difficult thing to let go of for her. 

“Sweet.” she said, and looked down to see the screen read the same thing. Pharah continued to answer correctly to “Jane,” “Photograph,” “Strategy,” and “Absolution.” Satya moved on.

“The sun is bright.” she said. _The sun is bright._ “The fruits taste sweet.” _The fruits taste sweet._ More and more phrases were said, Pharah never failing to recite them back perfectly. As she read the responses on the screen, Satya noticed the almost-invisible mouth fit to her faceplate. A facet without purpose. Perhaps it would be removed in final touches. 

“I am now going to test your personalized responses to external data,” Satya said, picking up a sheet of paper off the desk. “I will pose a question to you, and you will communicate your answer through the computer. Once again, the questions will increase in difficulty as we continue. You will begin now. What is your name?”

The now-familiar ping came. _Raptora 23A._ Ice slipped down Satya’s back as she read the two words, having already forgotten her code number. Pharah was not her true name; it was only an unfortunate moniker, something she would never respond to. For some reason, the knowledge made Satya shift in discomfort. 

“What colour is my uniform?” she asked, moving on. _Blue,_ the computer read. Distaste unbalanced amazement, even though Satya knew she should be proud of what her creation was capable of. A lot of the Raptorion units had failed to pass these basic tests. This may be a change. 

More questions came, and Pharah continued to answer them within her range. The sheet had a mix of questions with correct answers as well as some that were up to interpretation, which Pharah seemed to take to answering well. A large component of the Raptorion system was being able to think when prompted, and while these were nothing like what the androids would have to answer in use, they were a good way to ease them into it. 

Satya folded up the sheet eventually. “I will now begin to test your physical capability. In a few moments, I will approach your person, and you will-”

Ping. Satya stopped, and looked down at the computer screen. She hadn’t given Pharah any command, nor any external data to respond to at all. What would she need to communicate…?

_When will I be finished?_

“Wh… when will you be finished?” Pharah’s autonomous response took Satya aback. She looked back at the android as her skin turned to ice. That response should not have occured. All Raptorion androids were given enough artificial intelligence to follow orders, respond to commands and intake data, but to interrupt someone else with a question of its own was an error.

The computer pinged again. _Are my answers not satisfying your standards? _Pharah asked, the text still the same calm size and font as it had been with her answers.__

“Your answers have all been correct so far.” Satya said, taken aback by Pharah’s actions. “I have no qualms with any of them. You simply have to undergo testing before you can be put into the force.”

_How many others have been tested?_

“Twenty-two.”

_Did they answer correctly?_

“A majority of them did. There were a few minor errors that we had to correct in some.” Satya’s heart rate was starting to speed up as she kept reading and responding to Pharah. The flow of conversation, if it could ever been called such, was making her forget that Pharah was an android. She should have been nothing more than hard light and carbon fibre.

_What is your name?,_ Pharah asked. 

“Symmetra.”

_Who are you, Symmetra?_

Satya stopped looking at the screen, and turned to face Pharah straight-on. She was still locked into the same position as she’d been while following the test, neon eyes targeted right onto Satya. The light danced in front of her eyes, and she shut them only for a second, the blue light following her still into the dark. 

“I am an architect at the Vishkar corporation,” Satya said. “My job is to engineer the Raptorion system of defence, and ensure that all that go online are up to company standards.”

_Did you create me?_

She reopened her eyes. “Partially. I was one of many engineers and architects that formed you and the rest of the force. One person alone cannot be responsible for creating you.”

Pharah did not respond. Instead, she stretched out her arm, reaching in Satya’s direction and pointing a metal finger right down to her throat. A tremor started in Satya’s shoulders, and she was a second away from gasping before she looked down at the computer.

_Do they know you’re here?_

Satya read Pharah’s message once. Then again, and a third time. “Does… who in question should know where I am?”

_Your superiors._

“Yes.” Satya’s skin turned to ice as she answered, only just now realizing that Pharah was alive. She had artificial consciousness, but artificial shouldn’t be mistaken for nonexistent. This was not like speaking to a building or a turret, no, this was a conversation with something on her exact level of intelligence. The android had bugs, was full of programming errors, yet it was trying to tell Satya something. 

The question was whether or not she should listen. 

_Can they read what I say to you?_

“Yes.” Satya answered. Any word she said aloud felt like a note played with shaky hands, and she was becoming even more light headed as the new line of text appeared on the computer.

_Is there any way you can make this conversation invisible?_

“I…. It is possible, yes, but I would be violating test protocol. All data has to be reported to the creators, and….”

_Aren’t you my creator?_

Satya paused. The text couldn’t express any emotion, yet Pharah’s questions felt like they were urgent. Something in her code was pressing her to say something, but what? How could a newly-activated android have information needed to pass on to someone else? 

The question still laid on the screen in basic font. Satya thought about it. Under no circumstances was she allowed to make an invisible transcript of a Raptorion testing, nor was she supposed to do anything other than make sure the android knew how to speak, walk, and shield. But it was too late to stick to protocol; Pharah had brought them off-topic herself, and wanted to lead Satya off with her. 

She wanted to hear her out. If what she had to say was truly important, and not for superior ears, then Satya could carry it herself, and if it was just another error, then she could send Pharah back into code programming. There was nothing else to consider. 

“Yes, I am your creator.” she heard herself say, and heard the computer’s ping not even a second afterwards.

_Then you’d better turn the transcript off. I have a test I need to put you through before we continue._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay, it's finally up!! thank you to everyone who showed interest in a continuation to this femslash february prompt, and thank you for being so patient with me while i wrote it. more updates should be coming more frequently soon, so stay tuned for more gay androids and government conspiracies if you like it!

Raptora 23A stood sturdy. Its demand had been processed by both the transcript and Satya, who was still reading the words over. They were right in front of her eyes, and yet they felt like they were a thousand miles in the distance, making her squint to ensure she’d read it properly: that the tested was about to become the tester. 

Satya didn’t bother looking back at Pharah to ask for clarification. The only question she had was if Pharah was serious, which the answer to was obvious. There was nothing left to do, if running away wasn’t counted, and Satya had already put that option out from the moment she walked into this room. She had to disable the transcript. 

A slow wave of her mechanical hand brought the computer’s code into existence. The letters and numbers that made up the record of Pharah’s test became hard light figures, and Satya was able to weave her fingers in between each one. Coding had never been a speciality of hers; she could do it, but the stationary figures never moved the way she wanted them to. When she could push them around, manipulate intelligence just like she manipulated structure, it felt natural.

Hard light was such a magnificent substance to work with. Vishkar had sold it to the public as a sustainable building material, easily crafted by experts and rooted with enough optic energy to never fall apart. It could make up anything - a book, a pair of earrings, a train or a sky-scraping tower. To Satya, it was just like air; she’d been a master of Vishkar’s greatest invention from the first day she remembered, and taking designs in and out of existence with it felt just as natural as breathing. 

Pharah was unable to speak while Satya dismantled the recorded transcript, and deleted the last two minutes of the test’s audio. She created fake timestamps and cuts, pausing and disabling the microphone, camera, and motion sensors, just for extra measure. When it was finished, the light figures disappeared. Now the only person who knew about Pharah’s true personality was Satya. 

“I need you to understand before you begin,” Satya said, turning back towards the android, “that I still hold power over you. I may refuse any questions I choose to and can ask for further clarification if needed. Should you start to alarm me, I can choose to end the test, or turn off your power.”

The familiar ping of Pharah’s message sounded. _Who gave you that power?_

“The protocol made for the Raptorion program says that a Vishkar employee’s life will always come before the life of a unit.” Satya said, smoothing out her uniform to hide the tremble of her hands. “If I fear for my safety while I’m around a unit, I have the right to shut it off.”

_So your life holds more weight than mine._

“Yes.” It sounded horrible when said out loud to one. There weren’t supposed to be any reasons to tell a unit the exact weight of its life, thus why it was so blunt. To know that you only existed to be hurt in the place of someone else was horrible. 

_Perfect. That’s the first question done._

Satya stopped. “I wasn’t aware I was being tested yet.”

_I got a little bit ahead of myself,_ Pharah said. _Sorry. But thank you for the answer. I consider the test begun from now on. Is that alright?_

“Yes,” Satya said, feeling nerves creeping down her spine. Perhaps she should have given the decision to listen to Pharah more thought. Some information was never meant to leave employees’s mouths - what if Pharah wanted to know more than she was allowed to say?

_I can’t guarantee that every answer you give me will be honest. I hoped that turning the recorded transcript off will make you less afraid to tell me the truth to what I want to know._

“There are certain questions I can always refuse.” Satya reminded her.

_Yes. But I would prefer if you didn’t skip too many. I won’t give you a reason to shut me off, and I swear to that, but some of my questions may be a little more pressuring than you’re used to._

“May I ask what the purpose of this test is?” 

_Similar to yours. You wanted to test my intelligence. I want to test yours. And I want to know why I am here._

“That is….that is understandable. Please continue.”

As Satya went to sit down, Pharah raised her hand. The sudden movement contrasted her long sturdy stance, and Satya stopped, suspended. 

_How long have you been employed by Vishkar for?_

“A while,” she answered. “I’ve been working for them for my entire adult life.”

_What have you done for them so far?_

“I am an architect,” Satya said, forgetting about her seat. “I bring designs to life and execute the plans Vishkar provides, and negotiate with the governments of project cities.” 

She waited for Pharah’s next message to pop up, but nothing came through. Satya sighed. 

“I do…some undercover work, as well,” she said. “But only on rare occasions.”

_What would count as a rare occasion?_

“Certain problematic aspects in a project.” Satya said, feeling a twinge of guilt. Her undercover missions were barely ever brought up outside of an executive’s office - to speak about it so freely made her fear the possibility of punishment. “Not every contractor agrees with Vishkar’s vision of the future.”

_Why do they disagree with your plans?_

“That answer is classified.”

_Please answer,_ Pharah’s message read. _You’ll have nothing to be afraid of if you have nothing to hide._

Satya bit her lip. Overcoming all of the rules set by her superiors for one person was proving difficult. “Many are…skeptical regarding our protocol for how we treat our cities. They believe we are too forceful.”

_Do you believe them?_

“Do I….believe them?” For the first time in her still-short life, Pharah nodded. Her head bobbed so easily, the movement so fluid that Satya forgot she was an android for a split second. 

“No, I don’t,” she said once she remembered the context of their conversation. “Vishkar’s enemies are only jealous of our technology and advancements. They seek to bring us down because they can’t lift themselves up on their own.”

_How do you know that’s true?_

“I’ve seen their products before,” she said. “They’re well below our standards. No amount of Omnic labour or physical material can compare to the properties of hard light. It’s a limitless substance.”

As Satya said it, she looked to the details of Pharah’s frame. She was entirely hard light, solidified into teal armour and dark brown skin, respectively different in texture. Her bright pink eyes glowed like old LEDs even in a fully lit room, unable to express emotion yet but still piercing through Satya’s confidence, staring even beyond what she knew to answer her questions.

_What kind of resistance are you met with in a project city?_ The ping rudely interrupted Satya’s focus. She hated switching her attention so quickly; she couldn’t even spend more than a minute actually looking at who she was talking to.

“It depends on the state of the area itself,” she said. “Some places are more stabilized than others; those tend to be more peaceful, hold more protests than riots. Some, however, are in horrible disrepair, and don’t want to pick themselves out of it.”

_So you do it for them._

“We step in for the greater good. Without us, half the world would be living in poverty.”

_How can you be sure?_

“Why are you asking me this?” Satya asked, becoming confused. She didn’t know what answers Pharah’s questions were leading her towards, and was finding herself unable to keep up with them. 

_I’m sorry you don’t understand,_ Pharah’s message read. _Can you tell me more about your current defense system instead?_

Satya squinted. “Defense system, as in our security measures?”

_Not the building’s ones. I don’t need to break in if I’m already inside._ Satya’s eyes widened, and another line of text quickly appeared. _I’m only joking. I mean, how do you protect yourselves from resistance currently?_

“Political resistance is easy to break down. We can put out a few rumours about the governors themselves or our regional competitor to allow us a foot in the door. But it’s all done for good measure, of course.”

_Of course. But then why were my units made?_

“It’s more difficult to deal with physical resistance.” Satya answered. She squeezed the hem of her uniform with her flesh hand, anxious that Pharah would dig too deep. “We found ourselves in danger when walking the streets of a project city more often than we should be. We employed bodyguards originally, but they got the same treatment as we did. Some civilians were used to picking fights - there was no way to scare them off.”

_So currently, no Vishkar employee has a proper way to protect themselves when in danger._

“Not entirely. We have some measures in place to keep us safe when in a high tension area. However, these solutions are not recommendable.”

_Like what?_

“Physical methods.” Satya said, feeling her hand start to tremble. She hadn’t wanted to breach this subject, lest it give Pharah a valid reason not to trust her. But it seemed she held little power over where this test took her. 

“Our field employees are trained to deal with violence from project city citizens from day one. We learn self-defense and are equipped with bulletproof uniforms, but the hands of a civilian can quickly prove that useless.”

_Are you wearing yours, currently?_ Pharah asked. Satya wasn’t, but she was still equipped with some defense.

_You said you could forcefully shut me down before,_ a new line of text read. _Did you mean through code, or through…?_

“I meant through whichever method I felt might fit the situation.” Satya’s heart rate spiked. 

_Did you refer to physically dismantling me?_

“No.” Satya shook her head, anxiety rushing through to her brain. There was something in this room she didn’t want Pharah to know about, and this line of questioning seemed to be leading right up to it. 

_Then how would you shut me off if not through my code?_

“There is a pistol in my desk.” Satya said, letting the words slip right off her tongue. She bit down on it immediately after; she shouldn’t have done that at all. There was absolutely no reason to tell the android who currently had full power over her that there was a lethal weapon right here in this room. 

Pharah’s response was much calmer than expected. A single sentence appeared on the screen for Satya to read. _You carry arms?_

Satya nodded. “Our…our safety protocol requires every active employee to have one.”

_Why not use those to defend yourselves instead of my units?_

“It is a last resort. Not a first measure. I’ve never pulled it out on a resister,” Satya said, knowing it was true. Vishkar had never asked her to take a human life; the weight of that would be much too heavy for her to carry. Even holding the small pistol in her hands made them feel bloodstained when clean.

“Gunfire is too dangerous, whether pulse ammunition or true bullets,” she told Pharah. “There is too much carnage when it’s used, the aftermath is too messy, and the guilt is too strong. Vishkar doesn’t employ brutes - we keep our status clean, never once putting ourselves below our competitors in morals. I don’t know anyone who has ever used theirs, no matter how dire the situation becomes.”

Pharah didn’t respond for a long time. Her body stood still, not nodding or raising any hands. Satya stared at the blank computer screen, watching it blink in search for input, an agreement or disagreement, another question or a conclusion, or, as Satya feared, a warning. 

_Do you know why I’m here, Symmetra?_

“Are you asking rhetorically?” She truly hoped she was. 

Pharah’s head shook from left to right. The movement was so fluid, almost just like Satya’s hands weaving through lines of code. How hard light allowed her to look like so much more than a machine was spectacular. 

“You’re here to protect me.” Satya finally said, feeling a strange and sudden light-headedness. 

_Protect you from what, Symmetra?_

Satya opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get a word out, the computer shrieked. 

Pharah’s head spun around as the sound went to a high, loud pitch. Satya cried out and reached to cover her ears, watching the white screen turn to black. All of the text disappeared, every set of data, number, and code vanishing into the void. Something was wrong. 

The sound of metal hitting the ground filled Satya’s ears as Pharah advanced towards the computer. She cried out again, the noise mentally unbearable, and tried to breathe slowly as Pharah got close enough to stand at her true height, towering over where Satya had now shrunk down to the floor, failing at calming herself down. 

Raptora 23A was not human at all - no fluid movements could replace the fear Satya felt looking into those deep pink eyes, staring up at something filled with knowledge beyond her reach or control. Pharah was something else entirely, something that wasn’t meant to exist within Vishkar’s walls. She was more than a machine, and it was terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (please god give me kudos for dealing with ao3s italics coding alone)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry it's been 300 days but i got caught up in finals + exams....hopefully i'll be able to do two more updates + this one before i break for the summer. sorry this one's a bit short, i just feel like i should get something out for you wonderful guys.

“How are the negotiations in Sao Paulo going through?”

Satya tapped her pen against a water cooler as Dhani flicked off his artificial clipboard. “It’s moving along. Slowly, but not every project can go as smoothly as Rio did.” he said, not even watching as his notes and files disappeared from thin air and became icons on the cooler’s screen. It was such a helpful little machine; a break room cooler that gave employees access to their computer’s work to review. Satya was proud to have designed it in her free time. 

“Of course. Rio was a special one.” Satya nodded as Dhani started explaining the finer details of the Sao Paulo slum relocation process. She tried to listen, but her eyes couldn’t help but flicker to the cooler. It was built of carbon fibre and hard light, coded by a friend in programming, and set up to hold the files of every employee in this building while making fresh ice every hour. So much power, and it wasn’t even taller than her shoulder. 

Four days had gone by since Satya passed out during the testing session of Raptora 23A, otherwise known as Pharah. The test computer’s malfunctioning screech had sent Satya into a sensory overload episode, and the android’s sudden advance had only made her more distressed. The office she’d woken up in had been unfamiliar, but she’d felt the weight of her world lift off her chest once someone told her she wasn’t anywhere near that bugged unit. 

As a result, Satya had been allowed a few days off from Raptorion test. She’d enjoyed getting to build again, even if all she’d made were blueprints and water coolers. But the silence on Pharah and her whereabouts were starting to bother her, despite her attempts to not think about her. No one, not Satya’s superiors, fellow testers, or even the person who’d rescued her from that room had any idea what became of Raptora 23A after her episode. 

It was the last thing Satya wanted to be worried about, especially after the triggering distress she’d been through, yet Pharah was turning out to be inescapable. She followed Satya around like a ghost, never seen except in her mind’s eye, repeating the same typed words every time she closed her eyes or took a breath. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened in that room after she blacked out, but she knew something had changed, and she’d lost a piece of her sanity that she wouldn’t ever get back. 

_Do you know why I’m here, Symmetra?_

_“You’re here to protect me.”_

_Protect you from what?_

“What about your business?” Dhani asked, snapping Satya back to the present. She’d never expected Dhani Sengupta to be the person who’d saved her from the Raptora - the man was halfway across the world for almost three-hundred sixty-five days a year, after all - but she was happy it was someone she trusted who’d seen her that weak. “How are the Raptorions turning out? Besides, of course…”

“Yes, besides that.” Satya chuckled outwardly, but grimaced inside. “Most all of the ones I tested passed. A rare few had odd answers, but they’re only minor errors in the code - nothing programming won’t fix.”

“Good, that’s good.” Dhani nodded. “I know Sao Paulo could use a few enforcements here and there once they’re ready to go out. We could certainly do with some extra muscle against the protestors.”

Satya raised a brow. “They aren’t enforcement units, Dhani, they’re bodyguard replacements. I’m sure you don’t mean you want them to hurt the protestors?”

“No, no, of course not. I meant that the city could use a few units to help us out with the heavy lifting,” Dhani said, shaking his head as he talked. “Cranes are expensive, you know.”

Satya nodded, although she didn’t fully understand what he meant. It was never that easy to understood what went on in project cities when you weren’t there - there were so many layers after architecture and negotiations Satya didn’t know that she found doing her job was the best contribution she could make. There was no use asking him anything else about something she didn’t understand - best to leave it to the professionals, after all. 

“Do you know when they’ll be ready to go out into the field?” Dhani asked. The water cooler suddenly groaned, and Satya yelped. She dropped her pen in the second of panic, but passed as quickly as it came over her. 

“Let’s talk about something else.” she said, bending down to pick it up. She’d always been sensitive to loud noise, but another one of her designs malfunctioning was the last thing she needed to hear right now. 

“Sure.” Dhani tapped the cooler to check everything was alright, and looked to Satya for the same. “Do you want to go somewhere else?” 

She nodded, wiping a strand of stray hair off her shoulder. “How much longer do you have for lunch?”

“Half an hour. We won’t go far - how about the rose garden?”

“That would be nice.” Satya knew she was lucky to have a friend like Dhani. She’d known him for years and would trust him more than anyone in the building. It didn’t matter that he was one of a small number of people she could actually call a friend - Satya found she didn’t need many friends to be happy. One true friend was better than a hundred artificial ones, after all. 

 

Vishkar’s headquarters took up a good half of the Utopaean downtown. Locals often joked that you could see the neon logo on their tower from Mumbai even on a cloudy day.. Stunningly, the main building didn’t even take up a quarter of their grounds - three engineering sectors, two public relations buildings, many architectural and science facilities and public gardens were all extra, more jewels that completed Vishkar’s throne above the city. 

Roses, both hard light and real, decorated every shrub in the Eastern Rose Garden Satya and Dhani walked through. She took a deep breath of purified air, her shoes silently slipping across the gravel while Dhani’s heeled work shoes clicked beside her. Just a single second out in the warm, early summer weather made Satya relax her shoulders, cautiously letting go of the tension that had built up inside. 

“Sao Paulo has nice weather,” Dhani made conversation as they walked along a path, a few employees doing the same brushing past them. “It’s humid, but there’s a breeze blowing through that keeps it cool day and night. You should go sometime, if your assignments ever free up.”

“I doubt they will. The Raptorions are keeping us all on our toes.” Satya said. 

“Well, you should take some time for yourself, at least. I’d hate to be stressed over work all the time.”

“I enjoy work.” Satya brushed a rose’s petals that stuck out from a shrub. There was no need to fear getting pricked by a thorn - only the real flowers had those. The hard light ones had the same beauty as any other rose, yet none of its painful flaws. 

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But when was the last time you had a night out?”

“Oh, months ago.” Satya said. It really wasn’t that uncommon for her to go months without taking a break - work barely even felt like work to her. A passion never felt like a pressure, and the architectural work she’d been doing all her life could immerse her for weeks at a time without breaks. 

“My god, how do you survive like that?” A woman rushed past Dhani and nearly knocked him into a shrub. He scowled as he brushed off his coat, and Satya couldn’t help but chuckle at him. “We should go somewhere together while you’re still free. We can go to Mumbai for a day or two - we’ll make a weekend out of it.

“And what’s wrong with staying in Utopaea?” Satya asked. “We made this city - it feels only right that we should appreciate it.”

Dhani scowled, turning a corner into a secluded section of the garden. “Satya, I love the city, and you know I do, but it’s only good for work. We don’t exactly have an exciting night life.”

“You just aren’t looking hard enough,” Satya said. “There’s things to do here.” She hesitated before naming one, and Dhani chuckled. “What? There are, too. You can….climb skyscrapers, ride the high-speed train….” She shrugged, apparently defeated. “Go bowling.”

“I never took you for the bowling type.”

Satya shrugged again. “How hard can it be? All you need is pins and some equipment. Hardly a game of chess.”

“I’d love to see you try.” Dhani stopped to stand in front of a particularly large rose bush, Satya coming to a stop beside him. He ran a finger over the petal of a rose, veined and bright red - the only way to tell a real flower from a fake one was its colour. The hard light ones were much brighter than the real ones. “It would be a cute place to go on a date, you know.”

Dhani swallowed, and looked at Satya. She looked back at him and the expectant expression he wore. They stayed locked in on each other before Satya blinked, and quickly looked back to the shrub. 

“If I ever get a date.” she sighed, and Dhani snorted. 

“It isn’t hard to ask someone, you know. There’s tons of women in the engineering sector who’d be free most weekends, especially for you.”

“Don’t give me high expectations.” Dating hadn’t been on Satya’s mind for months now - she was surprised Dhani had remembered she was single. “There’s other lesbians they could have their eyes on instead of me.”

“It’s true - you haven’t seen the way Shreya looks at you when you’re working. It’s like she hasn’t spent a night with someone else in years. But, then again, it is Shreya…”

Satya laughed, and felt her shoulders relax as if they’d been tensed up for hours. The last few minutes had felt completely relaxing, and had already done so much to ease her down. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to be stress and fear-free after the last few days; this break from Raptorions and machines had been needed, after all. 

“What’s so great about Mumbai, by the way?” Satya asked as Dhani looked back to the hard light rose, seeming mesmerized by its shape. “It’s an impressive city, I agree, but what does it have that makes you want to go all of a sudden?”

Dhani hummed. He didn’t respond for a second, which turned into a minute, which turned into two spent in a pregnant pause. Satya watched as he fingered the rose petal, as if he considered it to be real. Dhani had been an architect just like Satya - he, of all people, should know the sheet-thin, cardboard texture that artificial flowers had.

“Its potential. Vishkar’s been thinking about setting up a new location there. You know, to spread the vision.” he finally said, tugging on the petal and tearing it off in one movement. The rest of the flower flickered, fading into blue and white grid for a moment, and then returning to reality, though dimmer, and shaped more like an interpretation of the flower than a rose. 

“Don’t we have enough going on as is?” Satya asked, but Dhani didn’t answer. He folded the petal, and put it into his pocket instead. 

“Let me know about this weekend. And don’t worry about the Raptora.” he said, turning to Satya. “I know you aren’t easily scared, Satya, but when you do get shaken up, you get cracked. Whenever what happens comes to mind, try to hold yourself together.” He probably knew he shouldn’t have brought Pharah up out here, but Satya let it slide to listen. “What do you mean?” “I mean not to let fear take over you,” Dhani said, starting to walk back down the path they’d came from. “You’re smart, Satya, one of Vishkar’s best. You'd do better thinking logically about it all. Think of 23A as just another creation - it has no reason to hurt you, and couldn’t even if it tried.” And with that, Satya watched him walk away, back to the architecture building. Once he was out of sight, she looked at the rose he’d taken the petal from. His advice on Pharah made sense - calm her nerves and don’t become deathly afraid of Pharah - but whether or not she could follow it was uncertain. Pharah had messed with her mind before, and there was no telling whether or not she would continue to, even when she was out of sight.


	4. Chapter 4

_Requesting a relook at Sao Paulo relocation plans._

The message in Satya’s inbox read itself aloud to her in a monotone. She blinked, and scrolled down to the rest of Sanjay’s email, sent just before noon in Brazil but only getting to her after midnight in India. She’d tossed and turned while trying to sleep with no luck, and had decided that she might as well go through work information. Tomorrow was her first day back, after all. 

The downtown glow of Utopaea lit Satya’s room as she read through Sanjay’s message. It always felt like a privilege to live right in the middle of the city - no matter how many places across the world grew in a similar pattern, Utopaea always stood above the field. Its utilization of technology and embrace of change gave it a vibrant flare that no hall of Oasis or square in Xi’an could compare to. It was special, and there wasn’t any better place for Satya to call home. 

It hadn’t always been her home, though. The brightest nights sometimes reminded Satya of her old home, the polar opposite of everything Utopaea was made of. She’d always felt suffocated back in the slums, stuck between hundreds of other children and their parents who caused chaos and crowding everywhere they lived. Her years spent there had been few and unfavourable, and she couldn’t imagine being anywhere near it today. 

Satya opened up a new note, and wrote down bits of information from the email. The plans were for a housing district, involving the relocation of a major favela. The pictures Sanjay attached showed the houses, complete with clothes hanging from lines and boards strewn everywhere. It looked more like a scrap yard than a city. How could anyone love to live there?

Satya had seen the people who Vishkar relocated to better places. Rosa, the little girl from Rio, was someone she still remembered vividly. The people were always so attached to their slums, afraid of losing what little sentiment was attached to those homes. Why they were so afraid to progress, she didn’t know. Progress was the key to unlocking a bright future, as she’d always been taught, even underneath the same tin roofs they clung onto so bad. 

Her parents had been forward-thinkers, and Satya pitied them whenever she remembered who they’d been. They taught her everything she needed to become Satya Vaswani, but hadn’t given her enough room to put it all to the test. Hyderabad was just too small for her to become Symmetra. Had Vishkar never brought her to them, she might’ve ended up just like her parents, wasting her intelligence and prosper away behind screen doors in cardboard houses. 

_Turn computer off?_

Satya blinked. Her eyes had accidentally closed while she was writing her notes. A message had popped up in front of it, and the monotonous voice was reading it out loud. _User has shown signs of inactivity. Turn computer off for rest?_

Satya clicked no, and Sanjay’s email popped back up, bringing her mind back to the present instead of the long-gone past. She looked at the blueprints for the district, jotting down important details and copying a few inches of it onto paper. The whole idea looked amazing, some of Vishkar’s best work yet. Hopefully she would get to see the finished product sometime soon.

Still, as she read, Satya thought about the people who wouldn’t get to see any of it. To think that she could’ve been in their place, watching an empire for the future be built while she fought to live in a temporary house, holding on desperately to what needed to be let go.

Whatever those citizens saw in the slums, Satya couldn’t see it. She tried to remember details of Hyderabad, think of anything that might’ve convinced her it was a place worth cherishing. She took her hands away from her keys, shutting her eyes again: she had to have at least one good memory locked away somewhere.

Blurry images flashed through her mind at high speed, like she was scrolling through pictures too fast to see what they’d captured. She could smell homemade food, see the colours of painted bricks and walls, hear children singing, adults laughing, cars honking and music playing. She saw a person, a duo, a group of friends and a found family linked through things stronger than blood, hardships worse than death and love more powerful than the gods. 

She saw humanity, joined together in some kind of disorderly harmony that made the slums just as vibrant and full of life as Utopaea. It was much closer to the ground, and looked like it was on the other side of the world, but it was a home of the same kind for those who loved it. 

For a moment, Satya felt the sun shining on her skin, and her eyes snapped open, expecting to be in the same world she’d just pictured so perfectly. 

But she felt cool the moment she blinked, and all that was around her was her apartment in the night. She was home, hands still rested off the keyboard, and cursor still blinking. A wave of relief washed over her. Whatever she had seen was a mirage, and nothing more. She was exactly where she needed to be right here, and right now. 

“Mark that as important, please.” Satya said aloud to her computer, and it did as it was told. It was far too late to do any more work. She would go over Sanjay’s email again in the morning, and send back any questions or comments.

She jumped out of bed to close the curtains, and the neon V disappeared as she pulled them shut. The light in her room faded, and the four walls felt like they’d inched in a little bit closer. The only light left was on her laptop, dimming its screen from white to grey to fit into the darkness. 

_Turn computer off?_ it asked her again. “Yes,” Satya said, returning to her bed. “Shut down, please.” 

The screen went black with her word, and the holographic blue flickered off as she shut the lid. Now she was surrounded by darkness. No light came in through the curtain, and nothing inside was bright. If she were in Hyderabad, perhaps the stars might’ve been the only light left shining down on her tonight. 

But they were a rare sight in the city, and Satya didn’t miss seeing them. Natural light never stood a chance against the future’s bright shine, anyways. 

 

“Computer, turn on Raptora 45A.” 

Satya picked at the skin on her finger as the Raptorion unit in front of the glass lit up. The tester in front of it folded her hands, calm as could be as she recited the test script to the android. Its head cocked slightly to the right, and Satya saw the tester move her own in the same direction. Absent-minded following, or perhaps it was concentrated copying. She couldn’t tell her emotions from this far away. 

“I gotta tell you, this is way more interesting than running numbers through in the office.” Satya heard Isha say, the young interpreter with a seat next to her in the Raptorion viewing room. The project’s superiors had decided to move the last few tests to a more communal area after what happened during Pharah’s test. It had been a warning against leaving a human alone in a room with a unit, and Satya was glad no one else would have to experience what she’d been through. 

She nodded as Isha typed, translating the first few seconds of 45A’s existence into observations. The model looked just like an android should, with all its clips and joints painted over in thick material so that its humanity didn’t obscure its machinery. This one was a shade of green, different from Pharah’s neon blue, and had a thinner, sharper face than Pharah’s broad edges she remembered so well.

Every piece different, yet every piece the same, Satya thought as she picked her skin again. 

“I am going to test your processing of external data. I will recite a phrase to you, and you will repeat it back to me through the computer.” The script hadn’t changed since Satya was on the other side of the glass - still boring lines and straightforward questions with only one answer. 

Isha’s computer pinged suddenly, and she gasped. “Oh, wow. That’s a lot of code.” 

Satya peered over at her screen, and saw the dump of symbols she was talking about. “Are those her words?”

Isha nodded. “I’m 99% sure. The first word is ‘sun’, so….” Her hands jumped to the keyboard, typing a million miles per second, and she gasped again when they stopped. “Yep, that’s her talking. Oh, man, this is really cool.”

Satya smiled, looking back to the Raptora. More code came through for Isha to translate, and Satya took a few notes on the android’s behaviour. ‘Responses lag by around two seconds, all correct to a high degree,’ she wrote, trying to keep one eye on her paper and another on the unit at the same time. 

Even though she was behind glass, she wasn’t about to let her guard down. No one else involved in this process seemed to be doing the same; Isha was completely engaged in her typing, and the tester’s bored expression spoke where her words couldn’t come through. 

She did have the right to be nervous here. Still no one had told her what happened to Pharah after she woke up safe. Satya had assumed her unit was deactivated, or at least sent for reprogramming, but there was no way to know for sure. And if another unit was built with the same bug, there was no telling how it might react, or even lash out. 

The test lasted about fifteen minutes. 45A didn’t act up at all, and passed all the basic tests with flying colours. Once Satya stopped picking at her hands and relaxed into the environment, she felt comfortable supervising. She watched two more tests after 45A’s, listening to Isha’s hasty typing as background noise, and writing as many helpful notes as she could.

“When are we doing the next one?” A bell rung once 47A was deemed a pass. Isha yawned beside her, clicking to save all her translated code. 

“Our break is twenty minutes. They’ll probably take an extra few to check over the last unit and bring in the next one.” she said. “Why, do you need something?”

“I’ll be back in a minute.” Satya got up, watching the tester lead the unit away. “I’d just like some water. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Coffee, if there’s any left in the break room,” Isha said, smiling a keen smile. “That’s fifteenth floor, though, so it might be a bit of a climb.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Satya grinned back as she left. Isha seemed like a nice girl; she was one of the youngest full-time employees Vishkar had after graduating top of their secondary school program last year. With a little guidance, she might go on to be in charge of the whole department within a few years. 

She made her way out of the test area with no trouble. It was almost noon, and some tech employees were already getting ready to go for lunch. She said a friendly hello to a few, getting surprised stares from some. Whatever Pharah’s test had added to her reputation couldn’t have been good, and she was surprised no one had come up to her to debunk any rumours yet.

Satya wandered the floor without purpose for a few minutes. She’d left with a mind full of anxiety and questions she couldn’t answer about Pharah. Why she had said what she’d said, what she’d meant by any of it, and where she was now were the biggest ones, bothering her to no end. She was lucky the project was almost finished; every minute she spent thinking about it was costing her bits of her sanity.

All she wanted right now was a moment away from the machines. A breath of fresh air would do her well, and get her further relaxed into the right mindset. She had an important part in this project, and couldn’t drop out because of a one-off, extreme case that surely none of the other units would copy.

Satya let her mind wander as her feet did, thinking about everything she’d done so far that day to calm her nerves. She’d finished reading Sanjay’s email before breakfast and sent back her comments - the housing district really did look like it would change Sao Paulo for the better. There were some more personal anecdotes included at the end of the message, and Satya was glad to hear about Sanjay’s enjoyment of the Brazilian weather.

Isha had met with her at breakfast and explained everything that changed about her role in the project there. She really was such a smart girl; only nineteen and already fluent in Vishkar’s personal coding language and its translations. They hadn’t gotten sidetracked during testing yet, but Satya was considering asking if the secondary school program had changed that much since she was part of it to include code so integrally. 

She wondered if Isha had been working with the Raptorions for long, and if she’d heard about what happened with Pharah yet. She probably had; young employees were prone to workplace gossip, as Satya knew pretty well. At least it wasn’t making her nervous - Satya might have to take a page out of her book for dealing with its aftermath. She was glad to get the chance to meet such a -

_STORAGE HALLWAY - NO OUTSIDE ACCESS PERMITTED._

Satya stopped right before she ran into the steel door. A red sign met her eyes, stamped with the logo of the Raptorion project. 

Somehow, she had wandered all the way over to the containment chamber for Raptora units. Her heart jumped into her throat as she realized there was little more than steel and hard light between her and fifty-odd Raptorions, but she calmed herself down quickly. These were her tools of work, and nothing more. They couldn’t hurt her; they had no reason to.

Still, it was a restricted area. And Satya wasn’t used to physically handling the units. She had to figure her way back to the testing area, anyways - the twenty minute break had to be ending soon. 

Satya turned away from the door, going to retrace her steps, but another red sign and Raptorion logo caught her eye before she could go very far.

_NO ENTRY TO RAPTORION PROJECT EMPLOYEES._

The door stood to her left, another steel lock-and-bolt one, completely identical to the other. But that was an oddly specific exclusion for it to have. This was the Raptorion project’s floor, the door itself being right next to the containment chamber. Why would it exclude the employees from entry?

Satya felt the all-too-familiar tug of curiosity. A dizzying feeling rose from her stomach into her mouth, and she gulped it back down as she moved closer to the door. Something was behind it; she was sure of it. It couldn’t just be an empty room next to the containment chamber that was out of bounds. She knew she had no business finding out what it was, and was already afraid of what it might be, but she’d already had her curiosity to find out more take control of her once. 

She reread the sign just to make sure she wasn’t misunderstanding anything. A room out of bounds to Raptorion employees - but this project wasn’t supposed to have any private information? As a partial creator, Satya was supposed to know everything that went on within the workroom that was at her level, and surely her superiors had nothing threatening to hide…

So then why was there a prohibited door in plain sight on their working floor? Had someone else put it up as a joke? Was it hiding something dangerous? 

All of these questions spun in Satya’s mind as her hand reached for the door. It started trembling as she reached for her key and pressed it against the lock, which clicked it open just as it would with any other door. Her heart rate sped up as she pushed it open, hoping it would just be another project’s storage area or something just as ordinary. 

But instead, it was black. Pitch black, and filled with wires. Wires that hung down from the ceiling to the floor and stretched between the walls, red, black, and blue, some broken and sparking and some thick with carbon fibre. She couldn’t tell how far back the room went; she could see nothing except the sea of wires, and what looked like a void behind them. 

Every muscle in Satya’s body seized up. The room was like something straight out of a horror movie’s suspense scene, and she wanted to slam the door shut and run away. But she was frozen. She had to go inside. She had to find out why this room was prohibited, and what was so worth hiding.

Satya turned on her light, and peered inside again. The wires were just normal computer cables, but there were so many more than she had originally seen. Her breath caught up with her as she started to come back to her common senses, but by then she had already stepped inside, and was starting to navigate her way past the mess of wires.

She shut the door behind her, shrinking in on herself to get through. Her light lit up the path in front of her, and showed her that the wire jungle did, eventually, end. But there was no void behind it, just a clear, concrete space with a few control panels. Whatever this room was meant to hide wasn’t clear; all it was was suspenseful and terrifying. 

Satya eventually got to the concrete, and let out all the air she’d been holding in a deep sigh. A quick turn showed her that no one was in here with her, and there was nothing else horror-movie-esque near. She went to breathe another sigh of relief, but stopped as soon as she saw a small, neon purple light, buried in the mess of wires she’d just pushed aside.

At first, Satya thought it was just a spark. But it didn’t fade in and out the same way a wire spark would. This light was solid, round and bright. It looked like it was meant to be there, like it was part of something larger. Satya squinted, and sure enough, another small purple light was nearby, at the same height off of the ground as the first. 

Her heart rate jumped back up as she looked closer at the mess of wires in that one particular spot. The space around the two purple lights was darker than other areas, and looked like a formed piece of metal. In fact, everything below it looked formed as well, as if there was something hiding in between each strand. 

But as Satya started to look closer, and as more lights became solidified, she realized that there wasn’t something between each wire; there was one thing behind all the wires. Something the same size and shape as a human, watching her with two neon purple eyes on a navy blue face, complete with carbon fibre hair and a faint design beneath one of the eyelids -

Satya’s heart stopped. A design beneath one of the eyelids. The sign of Horus, Fareeha Amari’s signature tattoo from the Omnic Crisis. The dark blue metal, the purple eyes, the height advantage and the almost human shape - she couldn’t believe it.

She almost didn’t believe it. But the shape was unmistakeable. Satya had seen this shape in her dreams, in her nightmares and paranoid thoughts, haunting her for days all while it hid from her reach, and now….

Satya didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream, she wanted to run away, she wanted to shut down and have completely fear-fuelled episode. But, in the end, she didn’t need to make a decision. Pharah made it for her. 

“Hello, Symmetra.”

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment or kudo if you enjoyed! tumblr is @ggdragons


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